Is Darwin's Theory Of Evolution True? Part Two

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I’m not Catholic, so I’m not sure whether Adam and Eve must be taken literally or not. Figuratively, for sure you can say that we are soil given life-- I mean, even from a purely physical point of view, we are soil made movable with water and animated with energy from the sun.

But like I say, I can’t speak to Catholic doctrine, only the Bible story itself and the way I see it.
 
Maybe, but the human body seems imperfectly designed, especially with regard to vestigial organs. I don’t think god would need to use building blocks that didn’t contribute to our lives as functional humans.
 
This makes sense. Science has not only no concept of the soul, but it cannot really explain consciousness in any very good way.

Ask a scientist a simple question: “How do you determine what systems other than brains even HAVE a mind. What if you found a complex device in space-- how would you know whether it was really experiencing the environment like we do?”

Seriously. There is no really good theory of mind at all, and a complete inability for us to observe the mind. And yet-- the mind is the most important aspect of my existence as a human being.
 
I would say that its suitable for the purposes that God has in mind, but its far from perfect.
 
You are right. Complexity by itself doesn’t tell us anything about intention. And if you think about it, processes cannot be the cause of a free intentional acts, because if the process alone is causing it to act then one cannot say the act is intentional. Intentional actions are irreducible causes insofar as the source of intention cannot be reduced to a random or deterministic process by definition. How does one go from blind unintentional processes to an act of intention?

Physics can only give us random or deterministic causes and effects.

From a strictly materialistic standpoint the self knowing intellect that moves with intentionality is an absolute mystery that is never going to be solved with physics and shouldn’t even exist if only physical processes exist…
 
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One has to know the purpose of design to know if it is good or bad. Bad designs are still designs.
 
Vestigial organs is old hat. We now know they still have purpose. Millions of appendices have been removed from that errant thinking.
 
I think the implications and what he meant by the term “common ancestry” is very clear given the topic of discussion.
 
To the OP, the theory that explains your fish’s appendage evolution is the theory of ‘scaffolding’.
What ‘scaffolding’ means is that a much larger structure was originally in place, perhaps a mass of cells some of which would sometimes light up, that over time was refined into only the portion that were actually beneficial for survival.

It’s a good question and shows that we do not believe that somehow the adaptation could ‘predict the future’ and say build up a stalk, then slowly curve it downward, then add the light at the end. I believe that is the heart of your question.

But if scaffolding occurred then we have a very different sequence of events. First a massive structure was created that in some occurrences had light emitting cells (many biological materials can emit light) and that this gave some advantage by luring in a meal.

The refinement into what you see however took a long time and happened by removing the portions of the structure that were not helpful or slightly harmful (too much extra mass to carry around). And I suspect that at some point the ability to move and swing that light source around gave a big advantage for luring in a meal.

Scaffolding is a valid biological concept, but further can be applied to any iterative design process. Evolution is just a description of how things change over long periods of time where there is scarcity of resources, and thus survival advantages can impact the direction of form into the future.

Darwin intended the ‘Origin of Species’ as a way to explain how life forms seem to exist in so many diverse forms, filling specific niches, thus having ‘specialization’. So evolution is the study of the dynamics of this specialization process. It is valid for many things other than just biological ones and is actually simple common sense.

For example, why is it that all of the furniture one finds at the antique store so well made? The answer is that all of the poorly made stuff isn’t around for you to see.

It is unfortunate that some take the ‘Origin of Species’ to mean the origin of all life. Perhaps that is just an unfortunate ambiguity of the English phrase. But Darwin was clear when he described that evolution is the theory of the process of how life changes, but does not explain the origin of life itself.

Evolution takes the existence of life for granted and just explains the process of change.

Evolution is just like the process of furniture making it into antique stores. We can see how over time only the well made and durable pieces can survive the process of being used and transported for over a hundred years. But this process in no way claims to explain how furniture itself comes about.
 
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Re: entropy. Yes, looking at the whole system entropy (disorganisation) must increase. However, there are natural systems where the entropy decreases in one part of the system, while there is a greater increase elsewhere in the system. In the evaporating salt water example, the entropy of the salt decreases while the entropy of the water shows a greater increase all driven by energy (name removed by moderator)ut from the sun.

The same happens in biological systems. The entropy of the living organism is kept low by processing energy (name removed by moderator)ut from the sun and by increasing the overall entropy of the sun-earth system. Once the organism dies it is no linger living and entropy takes over.

rossum
 
Aloysium said:
Evolution as an extension of adaptation is not possible.
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Adaptation is evolution; evolution is adaptation. Both are a change in the genome of an interbreeding population. That happens and is observed.

If you disagree with the current explanation of how that change in genome happens, aka “The Theory of Evolution” then you will need to find a better explanation.

What is your explanation of how ‘adaptation’ happens? Why are people living in malarial areas more resistant to malaria then people not living in malarial areas?

Why were Native Americans so susceptible to smallpox while the European immigrants were much less susceptible?

What is your explanation?

rossum
 
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People’s idea of perfection and that of God is frequently incongruent. That’s how we got here and is an indication of what what sort of conversion needs to take place.
 
We have a common “ancestry” in Adam and Christ. Anything else is irrelevant and actually a wrong-headed assumptIon as far as my reading of the evidence and reason tell me. We can believe what we want, but given that our beliefs guide our decisions, it’s best to ensure our focus remains on the Truth.
 
We also, except for African people, have a common ancestry in Neanderthals.
 
Frankenfurter said:
We can see how over time only the well made and durable pieces can survive the process of being used and transported for over a hundred years. But this process in no way claims to explain how furniture itself comes about.
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I would agree with this analogy that describes adaptation. The standard theory however states that a group of human beings, antique cabinets, came from a showroom of dining room tables.
 
I believe that’s wrong. Northern Europeans had some pretty stocky forebears whose signature remains in the human genome.
 
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You’ll have to demonstrate that it’s wrong, since it has been demonstrated to be right. “Stocky forebears” with Neanderthal bodies whose genomes were tested against human populations?
 
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